


Before The Devil Gets His Shoes On

by ChristineBH



Series: The Devil Is Loose (In Salmon street) [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Jealous Lance (Voltron), Lance's POV, Money, Non-Consensual Drug Use, One Shot, Reference to Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Shiro acts kind of like a dick but he's just worried and hungover, Very late sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-28 23:23:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20072317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChristineBH/pseuds/ChristineBH
Summary: Keith is in the hospital after the events that night. Lance tries to be strong while dealing with everything and Shiro and Matt visits Keith in the hospital.Keith turned his eyes towards Lance. He still didn’t show much but his gaze was sharper than it had been when Lance had found him and though Lance wouldn’t associate Keith’s sharp looks with anything pleasant he still smiled at him. Both in a weak attempt of comforting his friend but also because he was thrilled that the drugs seemed to have left Keith just a little bit.“Do you want me to go?” Lance asked. Lance wanted to stay by Keith’s side forever if he could but he would obey if Keith didn’t want him with him.





	Before The Devil Gets His Shoes On

**Author's Note:**

> _idom_  
Før Fanden får (sine) sko på: Before the Devil gets (his) shoes on  
_Very early in the morning_

Lance had kept his calm during the whole ambulance ride with Keith, he had kept his calm when Keith was wheeled into another room, somewhere where Lance couldn’t follow but his every thought told him he should follow. Lance had even kept his calm when the door closed.

But that was it, because after he knew that Keith couldn’t see nor hear him anymore, the dam broke.

He was in the middle of a hallway surrounded by countless other people, but he didn’t care. He scolded himself for not being strong a little longer but the relief was strong too. He didn’t want to but he needed to let the tears flow as he cried for Keith.

For the death of the little believe Keith still had had in the world after over a decade in the foster system, he cried for how hard this would be for Keith from now on and he cried for himself no matter how selfish that made him feel. He had no right to let go when it was Keith who should be the affected one but Lance had been _so_ _scared_ and the feeling still lingered inside of him.

He had been mad that Keith was having fun with someone else and kissing the guy right where Lance could see it. He hadn’t let it show but he had closed his door a little harsher than usually when he came home that night and been ready to throw himself a small pity party.

Then came the phone call. _The goddamn phone call_ that would haunt Lance’s worst nightmares but that he was also thankful for receiving.

He let out a sob when he remembered that he had almost just let it go on voicemail and another when he almost hung up when it sounded like Keith had called him in the middle of a hook up. He had yelled into the phone to get Keith’s attention and then quieted down when he heard about Keith crying and about protection.

He had promised himself a year ago to not run with his phone out of his pocket or bag since he dropped the last one on concreate and it was ruined forever but he did that night. Lance had been far from sure about anything at first when he ran but the small chance of what it sounded like had been enough for Lance to run with his phone to his ear as he listened for anything else incriminating

Lance had heard Keith being stripped, he had heard the other man putting a condom on, and he had almost been too late before stopping Keith from being stripped down to one sock. One single sock that was on his foot instead of muffling every sound he could make through the haze of being roofied.

Somehow that one sock was still imprinted to the inside of Lance’s eyelid.

* * *

Lance was still crying so hard that he could barely hear anything but he registered the question after he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Are you here for Keith Kogane?”

Lance nodded numbly.

“Do you know if he has an insurance?”

Lance looked at the man in a while uniform blankly for a moment. Lance really didn’t know that, if he had to guess in any other circumstances then he would say no but Lance didn’t want them to stop doing their best for Keith and Lance would gladly give the little money he had to his name to pay for Keith’s hospital bill and he knew that the others would too.

Lance closed his eyes as he took a deep breath to collect himself once more. “Yes, he does.”

Keith wasn’t away from Lance’s sight for long. All it took was a few blood tests and a physical exam through Keith had struggled the little he could.

Keith came out of the room on a hospital bed that he had been moved onto sometime during his time away from Lance and Lance followed it blindly as it was moved through halls, up an elevator, through another hall and then into a white room. The only things clinically white after the nurse had hooked Keith up to a heart monitor and left the boys alone was Keith’s black hair and Lance’s whole being of tan skin and brown hair.

Keith just stared at the ceiling without any emotions and that scared Lance far more than if he had screamed or cried. It was as if he was looking at Keith’s long dead corpse in a morgue instead of a hospital room.

“Are you tired?” Lance asked nervously as he played with his hands at the foot of Keith’s bed.

Keith blinked but didn’t move in any other way.

“I think that you can sleep now if you want to,” Lance continued. He tried to keep a light tone but his voice had raised its pitch and hid none of his desperation for anything to do or say.

Keith turned his eyes towards Lance. He still didn’t show much but his gaze was sharper than it had been when Lance had found him and though Lance wouldn’t associate Keith’s sharp looks with anything pleasant he still smiled at him. Both in a weak attempt of comforting his friend but also because he was thrilled that the drugs seemed to have left Keith just a little bit.

“Do you want me to go?” Lance asked. Lance wanted to stay by Keith’s side forever if he could but he would obey if Keith didn’t want him with him.

Keith moved his shoulders. It was just a slight tightening of Keith’s shoulder muscles but Lance could bath in the joy of Keith making any kinds of movements even if they were just him telling Lance that he either didn’t know or didn’t care if Lance was with him.

Lance walked over to the side of the bed and sat on the chair there. It was just hard plastic with no cushion but it wasn’t any more uncomfortable than the chairs in his different classes so he would live.

Lance looked down at Keith’s hand laying limp between the two boys.

“Can I hold your hand?” Lance asked and looked up to Keith and saw that he was already staring at him.

Keith’s eyes turned down to his hand and he moved his head in a single and weak nod.

Lance took the hand and moved it to his chest where he held it with both of his own hands.

“I’m so glad that you called me,” Lance said without thinking but continued when he looked into Keith’s eyes and felt the need to let at least the top of the iceberg out. “I thought I would be too late but you were so close to me and I’m so happy that I-“

Keith’s eyebrows furrowed and his mouth turned down before he turned his head away from Lance.

Lance was silent for a moment but apologized before too much time had passed. “I’m sorry, Keith.”

Keith still looked away but him hand twisted in its place between Lance’s hands.

“I won’t talk anymore about it anymore today, I promise,” Lance said and hoped that Keith could hear the sincerity and none of the frustrated tears trying to escape Lance. He just wanted to do something but he didn’t know how to without making Keith even more uncomfortable.

Keith turned his head to look at Lance once more and Lance’s guilt grew bigger than the whole hospital when he realized Keith’s eyes had turned glassy from more than the harsh light and the drugs still in his system.

Lance tried to think of something to say. He _needed_ to say _something_.

“So, um, how did you do on your exams?” Lance asked and wanted to punch himself so badly that he almost did it right there in front of Keith’s eyes. It was fall and they hadn’t had any exams since high school so this was probably the least relevant subject to talk about. 

Keith made the same twisting movement that indicated a shrug while he furrowed his eyebrows in a confused expression.

“I think I passed everything but I’m not sure about my last one,” Lance rambled. “The first questions were super easy but then I came to the middle part and _damn_ that was the _worst._”

Keith pulled his hand at the hand in Lance’s grip. Lance actually didn’t realize it at first as Keith still was nowhere near full strength and therefore couldn’t retract the hand without Lance letting totally go of it but he eventually noticed Keith’s furrowed eyebrows and quickened breathing when he couldn’t pull the hand towards himself.

Lance watched as Keith moved his hand up to his chest with the fist curled up. Lance swallowed as a pit grew inside of his gut and the emptiness was enough for him to fall far down to never be seen as the guilt of making Keith uncomfortable after the night he had had would fill the hole and drown Lance.

Keith uncurled his hand and brought one finger to his lips and Lance almost laughed when all the tension went away as Keith shushed him.

“Okay, I’ll shut up now.”

Keith let his eyes run over Lance’s face and extended his hand towards Lance again and Lance took it as soon as he realized that Keith was in fact letting him hold his hand again.

Maybe it was because Keith was on god knows what that he was allowed to but Lance was happy that he could be a little sappy with his handholding. If it would be awkward the day after Lance could just say that it was because of the terrible night Lance had had too and besides Keith was high and couldn’t be trusted with the finer details of how Lance was cradling Keith’s hand and brushing his thumb over one of Keith’s knuckles and the back of his hand.

There was a knock on the door and Lance turned around to see a doctor opening the door. A man in scrubs and a glorious, ginger mustache entered the room.

“Hello, Mr. Kogane and-,” the doctor his purple eyes on the hand held to Lance’s chest, “friend.”

“Hello,” Lance mumbled nervously about what the doctor was going to say. He knew that there couldn’t be a lot of things this ginger man could say but Lance felt like he was one step away from bursting with nerves.

“I’m Coran Hieronymus Wimbleton Smythe,” the doctor, Coran, told them in a smooth voice evidently used to say the ridiculously long name but still full of excitement. ”and I’ll examine you, Mr. Kogane.”

Keith kept quiet but when Lance looked over at him, he was nodding with eyes locked with Coran’s.

The checkup was uneventful with Coran touching different places on Keith asking him if he could feel it, checking Keith’s pupils and ability to focus.

Coran wrote on a piece of paper. Lance assumed that it was the results but it could be about other doctor-ly or nurse-ly things for all Lance knew.

“Can you tell me your name?” Coran asked and looked up from his papers in order to look at Keith.

Keith slurred something that sounded vaguely like his name and Coran tried to keep his neutral face but Lance saw how Coran’s mouth turned down 

“Are you dizzy?” Coran asked and Keith nodded.

Then Keith stiffened and burped as he tried to tell Coran and Lance something with how he was hitting the bed with his one free hand.

Coran seemed to know, or at least suspect, what the message was because he pushed Lance away a little and helped Keith sit up in a rushed way that couldn’t be comfortable and put a white plastic in front of Keith.

It wasn’t a normal plastic bag. It had a circle of white plastic giving it shape of a tube open on only one side and had measurements on the side of it. Lance couldn’t figure out the use was of it before Keith threw up into the bag roughly and without holding anything back.

There wasn’t a lot, only a mixture of liquid and some of the spaghetti Keith had had before he went out to the nightclub.

“So I assume that you’re nauseous,” Coran said as soon as he could safely take the bag away.

Keith looked up at Coran with narrowed, glassy eyes and a temporary hatred.

There were a couple more questions after that before Coran announced that they wanted to keep Keith overnight just in case that Keith would have a reaction to the drugs and that they wouldn’t have an answer to Keith’s blood test before a few days of the next week had passed.

Lance wanted to protest that that was too long but there wasn’t a lot to do and he didn’t know what he had expected on a Friday or early Saturday.

“And, I’m sorry to say it, but I’ll have to ask you to come back at visiting hours,” Coran said as he looked at Lance.

“_Why?” _Lance whined.

“Because that’s the rules. You can come back after the morning medicine have been given out to the patients at 8.”

Lance looked at Keith with a pout and then at Coran again. “What if I say that I’m his brother?”

Coran look a deep breath but he didn’t seem annoyed as he answered Lance. “Even if that was true I would still have to ask you to leave.” 

“Oh,” Lance deflated. “But I will be very quiet.”

“I’m sure,” Coran answered looking like he was sure Lance was lying but didn’t mind. “But this is a two-patient room and it needs to have a maximum of 2 people at night.”

“Okay,” Lance said and stretched the word out. He turned his eyes on Keith and smiled softly and full of compassion. “I’ll be back here tomorrow and see you at 8 sharp.”

“The morning rounds will probably not be done before 9,” Coran interjected.

“I will be back here and see you at 9-ish,” Lance corrected and lifted his hand to squeeze Keith’s shoulder but stopped himself and just awkwardly waved his hand a little before leaving the room.

Lance walked out of the room in a brisk pace but he stopped when he was in front of it and just looked at the closed door.

Coran soon came out of the room and although his eyes widened momentarily at the sight of Lance, he didn’t say anything. He just closed the door after himself and led Lance down the hall with a hand on his back.

“Come, my boy, I’ll lead you out,” Coran said in a way that spoke of countless difficult conversations and a will to keep both himself and everyone else happy.

“Will he be okay?” Lance asked desperately as he frantically looked back down the hallway.

“We’ll try our best. He’ll be monitored until morning and then we will take it from there,” Coran told him in the way doctors and nurses always did. They sounded like they promised the world but if you thought about it, they really didn’t promise a single thing other than good intentions.

“But what if something happens?” Lance asked and looked up at the blurry image of Coran.

Coran moved the hand on Lance’s back up and down. “Give me your number and we will call you with Keith’s permission if something was to happen.”

Lance blinked the blurriness away so he could see every wrinkle in the ginger man’s face. Both the ones from smiling and the ones from stressful situations.

“Thank you,” Lance breathed out.

* * *

Lance walked all the way out of the hospital and to the parking lot before he realized he had no car there and the buses wouldn’t be driving by the hospital at, Lance looked down at his phone, 1:34 am on a Saturday. He could take a taxi but he was a broke college student.

Lance sighed and hoped Shiro had been in a responsible mood or had went so hard that he had passed out before 12 so there was a chance of him being under the allowed alcohol limit.

It took four rings for Shiro to answer the phone and Lance had a naïve hope that meant Shiro had been sleeping.

“Oh shit, Lance, whaddup?” Shiro slurred out and destroyed all hopes Lance had for Shiro being anywhere close to sober.

“Yeah, it’s dat boi,” Lance muttered and for the first time didn’t care that he didn’t answer the phrase correctly word for word. “Are you still at the party?”

“Noooo! I’m home and will sleep in two seconds!”

Lance took a deep breath. He was really too tired and sober to deal with drunk people right now and his ears would bleed in two seconds if Shiro wouldn’t tune his volume down soon.

“Can you get Matt for me?” Lance asked in an attempt to find someone to pick him up.

“Noooo,” Shiro answered in a hushed voice as he remembered how thin the walls where. “He’s sleeping.”

“Wake him up, it’s important.”

“What’s wrong?” Shiro asked in a serious voice. It wasn’t his normal adult almost fatherly voice but he instead sounded like a pouty toddler.

“Just get him for me, okay?” Lance sighed.

“No, tell me!” Shiro insisted and clearly forgot to quiet himself down.

“Shiro, just-“

“No! If it’s important I want to-!” Lance heard the sound of a door opening roughly and without regards to the fragile life of the hinges through the phone. “Hey, Matt! I’m talking to-!”

“Shut your mouthhole, Shiro!” Lance heard Matt demand through the phone.

“Shiro!” Lance called in the hope that Shiro would listen this time. “I need to talk to Matt.”

“Matt, there’s phone for you!”

Lance couldn’t hear what Matt said but he heard the question in his voice as the phone switched between one twenty-something to another.

“Lance?” Matt asked.

“Are you sober?” Lance asked cutting straight to the chase.

“Yes, I was feeling sick so…” Matt let the sentence fall into nothing before he continued to talk. “What’s wrong?”

“Can you get me from the hospital?” Lance asked.

“What? I mean sure, I’ll get you from there but are you okay? Why are you there?”

“Keith in there,” Lance said and tried his best to stay strong but he suspected that Matt could hear how vulnerable he was at that moment.

“What? Why’s Keith in there?” Matt asked and Shiro started talking about Keith getting wasted in the background.

“I don’t want to talk about it. Everything is fine, but can you just come and get me please?” Lance almost begged.

“Of course, I’ll be there in 20 minutes,” Matt promised and Lance could kiss him right now if it wasn’t because of the impossibility of doing such a thing over the phone.

* * *

Lance hadn’t been picked up in the end. Matt had come in his old car with Shiro in the passenger seat and there had been no stopping Shiro from stubbornly not leaving the hospital as soon as he caught a whiff of Keith being in trouble.

Instead they had camped out in the car until 8.30 and then waited impatiently to be allowed into Keith’s room.

“Was did you do last night?” Shiro demanded to know the second he laid his eyes on Keith. Lance gave the room a once over but there were luckily no roommate to be seen at the moment. Only an unmade bed and a book on the bedside table.

“Nothing,” Keith insisted with an uncharacteristically meek voice.

“Like hell you didn’t. I wake up at 5 past nothing in the morning and hear you’re at the hospital and no one will tell me why. Did you have to be pumped? Is that it? You drank so much that you almost killed yourself and worried me half to death?”

“No, Shiro, I didn’t,” Keith insisted through the pain in his head. “I-I just-I just-“

“I don’t want your excuses, why are you in here?”

It was obvious to everyone that Shiro was just concerned about Keith’s wellbeing, frustrated that he didn’t know why Keith was in a hospital bed, and generally just really hungover but he didn’t even give Keith a chance to explain anything.

“Oh my god, Shiro, shut the fuck up!” Lance ordered in a loud voice that made both Keith and Shiro cringe as pain went through their ears and into their heads. “You’re being a really big ass right now.”

“Sorry,” Shiro said while looking at Lance before he remembered a second later that he should probably say it to Keith, “Keith.”

“It’s okay,” Keith mumbled.

Lance walked over to the chair near Keith’s bed and looked at him warmly. “Well, I’m glad you’re better than last night.”

“Yeah,” Keith sighed. “I can actually walk and go to the bathroom by myself now. Not that I want to with how hungover I feel.”

“How drunk were you?” Shiro asked in a horrified and just slightly judgmental tone of voice.

Lance turned his cold eyes towards Shiro. “Keith had like one beer.”

“And a drink,” Keith added.

Lance blinked and when he opened his eyes they were on Keith and when he blinked again they were back on Shiro. “Okay, Keith had one beer and a pink, girlish drink.”

“Then why are you here?” Shiro asked and had calmed completely down and was just worried and curious now.

“Um-I… I met this-,” Keith really did try but the words wouldn’t leave him. He looked pleadingly into Lance’s eyes. Lance wanted to hug him if it wasn’t for the room full of people and his serious doubt that it would amount to anything good for Keith’s newly damaged psyche.

Lance mentally shook that thought out of his mind and focused on the issue at hand. He gave Keith a conflicted look full of sorrow and frustration while he tried to voice his option without breaking anything with his words. “You don’t have to say anything today but they need to know eventually. They’ll understand.”

“Understand what?” Matt asked.

“Can you say it?” Keith whispered. His lips barely moved and his voice was softer than Lance had ever imaged Keith’s voice could be.

“Are you sure?” Lance whispered back.

They both knew that the other two in the room could hear at least half of their words and guess the rest but it felt intimate and private to whisper like this.

“Yes,” Keith answered.

Lance leaned back. “Okay, I’ll say it. Do you want us to go out or…?” Lance let the question linger in the air.

Keith thought about it for less than two seconds. “No, just say it here.”

“Okay,” Lance answered at a normal volume. “I’ll just say it here, with you in the bed right next to me, to our friends. No biggy.”

Keith’s lips fell into a thin line, his eyes where just the tiniest bit more closed than his neutral face and his eyebrows furrowed just enough to start two line between them.

Lance turned towards Matt and Shiro again who had been silent in all the time they had been ignored. “Keith met this guy last night,” Lance started.

Shiro and Matt shared a sceptic look about where this was going.

“And like the asshole he was, he put something in Keith’s drink.”

Matt’s and Shiro’s eyes widened in horror. Shiro’s hands curled up into fists and Matt’s mouth opened enough for everyone else to see the button of his upper front teeth.

“And then he-,” Lance tried to continue but the rest of the story was so horrible that he couldn’t even bare to think about it.

“No,” Shiro breathed out and stormed to the side of Keith’s bed that Lance wasn’t on. It was too fast and too powerful a walk and the way he bended down to look into Keith’s face for answers was too sudden. It made Keith jump back in his bed and to the side Lance was on, but the touch of that made Keith jump towards Shiro again and close his eyes so he couldn’t see how close he was to both of them. His shoulders tensed beneath the hospital gown and his face hid beneath his black bangs.

“He didn’t, right, Keith? He didn’t,” Shiro pleaded.

“He tried,” Lance said in a faraway voice.

Lance and Shiro moved away from the bed almost simultaneously and Keith’s shoulders relaxed the tiniest bit.

The silence grew between everyone. Dark and thick but none of them knew anything to say that wouldn’t make the already uncomfortable atmosphere worse.

Eventually it was broken by Keith who didn’t want visitors anymore. No one had the heart to argue.

* * *

“Mama?” Lance asked into his phone.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. Lance’s heart hurt when he heard her concern both from being reminded of how much he missed her and the thought of Keith not having this. Lance and the rest of Keith’s friends would have to be this for Keith. They would have to be strong and take care of him.

“Can I borrow some money?” he asked and cringed from how it sounded.

Lance’s mother let out a huff of air usually reserved for when Lance or one of his siblings tried to find reasons to not do their chores.

“How much do you need?”

“I don’t know. Like… Um….,” Lance thought for a moment and came to the revelation that he had no idea what hospitals took for blood tests and everything else Keith would get a bill for. “Probably like 500.”

“500!” she exclaimed on the other end of the line.

“At least 500,” Lance confessed.

“Lance, you know we don’t have that kind of money,” She scolded outraged that Lance would even ask that kind of thing. The guilt ate away at Lance’s stomach but he knew that the guilt would be so much worse if he let Keith out to dry after sending him to the hospital in an ambulance. Oh, god that would cost so much too. Lance just hoped that the others could get some money for that.

“My friend was at the hospital and the bill is coming soon, I think,” Lance explained as an answer to his mother’s comment about their financial situation without having to directly address it.

“And why can’t your friend’s parents give him the money?” she asked clearly not believing Lance’s explanation 100%.

“He doesn’t have any parents.”

“Lance, that is not something you joke about,” his mother scolded. “Stop lying and tell me what you need the money for. Is your friend on drugs? I don’t want you to be involved in things like that.”

“No, no, mama!” Lance yelled into his phone. “And Keith is literally an orphan.”

Lance almost bit through his bottom lip as he listened to the silence from his mother.

“Is he still at the hospital?” she asked.

“Yes, mama, he’s-“

“Are there anyone to take care of him when he gets home? What does he-“

“Mama,” Lance tried to interrupt.

“like? Your abuela can make him a sweater. Would he like a sweater?”

“Mama!”

“Yes, Lance?”

“Can I borrow the money?” he asked.

“I’ll see what I can do,” his mother promised and they said they goodbyes.

There were $600 Lance’s account 15 minutes later.

**Author's Note:**

> A third one will be posted eventually and probably long after Tuesday (which is my 22th birthday and earliest time I can look at the last part) about the consequences for Keith and his would-be-rapist
> 
> 18th of August at 00:13 and I realised that I forgot the change the title when I posted this story but remembered to put the right translation in the start notes.   
If anyone's curious, the original title was "To Paint The Devil On The Wall" and it will be the title of the next work in this mini AU.


End file.
